Now Stalin has opened up a chain of trendy restaurants in Portugal, where he lives with his poodle, Mr. Paisley.

The Romanovs are now thought by historians to be greatly overrated in terms of the role they played in history. Really, they didn't do much besides die. Their cousins were much more influential: the Stroganovs, of course invented Beef Stroganov in addition to producing the hit show "American Idol." Young socialite Ivana Stroganova has appeared in Playboy a record 37 times. She hopes to gain a job as a hostess at Mr. Stalin's cafes.

You deserved to be mocked. Really. I normally advocate cutting NoObS slack, but this is a ridiculous question. Uhm, would anybody mind going ahead and telling me about nuclear physics or Greco-Roman wrestling real quick? I have never heard of something called a "library," "books," "teh internets," or even "asking a well-thought out question."
What is this Gooooooooooogle of which you speak?

It IS a Russian forum. It also is a place to post reasonable, well-thought out questions. There are some people who are really knowledgable and helpful, but you need to practice some common sense and actually put forth minimal effort. Just asking someone to tell you about 70-some years of (well-documented) history is absurd.

www.google.com - type this into the box where it says http://masterrussian.net/mforum/viewtopic.php?t=8526 near the top of the screen. When the page loads, click on the box in the centre and type in "Soviet History." Move the mouse to the right and click on the button marked "search." Now, you're almost there, just scroll down the list and find a link which appeals to you! It's as simple as that!

Well, NOTHING is necessarily accurate; whenver humans are involved something is apt to be screwed up. There HAVE been concerns about it containing inaccurate material -- either unintentional or actually intentional deception. I seem to remember a story, though, about Britannica containing roughly the same amount of erronenous material. Of course, you can debate how severe the errors are, and of course, you can cite Britannica as being professionally researched and editted. But don't knock wikipedia just for the sake of doing so, as is fashionable these days -- you should never really rely on one source for anything anyway. Just my two cents...

Well, NOTHING is necessarily accurate; whenver humans are involved something is apt to be screwed up. There HAVE been concerns about it containing inaccurate material -- either unintentional or actually intentional deception. I seem to remember a story, though, about Britannica containing roughly the same amount of erronenous material. Of course, you can debate how severe the errors are, and of course, you can cite Britannica as being professionally researched and editted. But don't knock wikipedia just for the sake of doing so, as is fashionable these days -- you should never really rely on one source for anything anyway. Just my two cents...

Thanks for the source -- I don't think I read the Register's version, but some CNN-caliber thing. As anyone can see by reading it, my post belongs in wikipedia, probably. Perhaps I should readdress the matter. Wikipedia does not = Britanica in terms of suckiness. Britanica is somewhat better. With that being said Britanica still sucks to a fair extent. Thus you should read Wikipedia and Britanica and then reach a decision.

The thing about Wikipedia is, the article wirrten about the Soviet Union in English will probably be written by a Brit, or American. Whereas the same article in Russian will most likely have been written by a Russian. Obviously these two articles are going to vary greatly.

Right. And that's to say nothing of the length/depth of the articles. On numerous occasions, I've seen an article in English that substantially more in depth than its Russian version. But in these regards, I don't really know as this is much different than what Britannica would say about something vs. a Russian encyclopaedia.

Right. And that's to say nothing of the length/depth of the articles. On numerous occasions, I've seen an article in English that substantially more in depth than its Russian version. But in these regards, I don't really know as this is much different than what Britannica would say about something vs. a Russian encyclopaedia.

The reason is Wikipedia is mostly used by English speakers. The number of Russian users is limited and therefore the number of articles, and also the length of them is obviously less. Most long articles are written by numerous people.